Chereads / The Death Collector / Chapter 18 - 17. A Visitor At Dusk (Part 3)

Chapter 18 - 17. A Visitor At Dusk (Part 3)

A visitor at Dusk

Dante saw through his lies, his gaze piercing through the boy's fragile facade. "But your own is not the only life that ended by your hands, am I wrong, Thomas?" Dante's knowing voice left the boy wide eyed in fear of his past actions. 

The moments flashing before his eyes as a reminder of what he had done; as if he needed a reminder.

"Wh- What are you talking about?" Thomas looks around discreetly to see if he could find an object he could use to defend himself.

"You remorse over what your darkness made you do. You blame it and you blame yourself; should you have chosen to pay for what you did to her; I would not have been summoned. But now you have made your decision." 

Finality of the conversation was in the tone of his voice, Dante moved closer.

"No- No it wasn't me. I swear I didn't do anything," Thomas denied the claims made by Dante as if he could make a mistake. 

"What is your wish, mortal? Do you concede or do your repent?" Dante asked as the last option, however knowing full well the boy's ledger was red, in fact it was gushing and that only meant one thing. 

"I don't understand." Thomas claimed though he had a semblance of what was being asked of him. He was to confess but he was stuborn. 

Thomas's body rose on it's own account and his neck was now in Dante's unyielding grip.

"Mortal, your lies, your denial, has no effect in my eyes but only your sins and regrets. You can believe your claims of being under the influence of libations forbidden, you can claim it was the devil who made you do it. Can your futile attempts undone what you did?" he said softly, his words a painful reminder of the boy's sins.

"I- I was drunk, look I'm sorry I really am, she came out of nowhere in front of my car, I didn't know what to do, I ran away, I admit, I shouldn't have; I got scared." Thomas admitted what he believed happened or what he wanted him to believe.

"But then you stayed, you stayed and you laughed as you defiled the girl dying at your expanse, didn't you, Thomas?" Dante although iterated such cruel events of Thomas's sin's, he himself had not an ounce of his own emotions mixed into the syllabals; for he had none. His voice remianing as monotonous as before.

Tears welled in the boy's eyes as he nodded, his guilt laid bare before the relentless gaze of his visitor. 

"Please have mercy..." Thomas asked looking down in the shame of his actions.

"It is not mercy that I am here for; I seek to give you simply what you wished; death by redemption."

And as Dante spoke of redemption and atonement, the boy felt a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness that threatened to consume him.

"You are redeemed only when you repent. This death will be repenting enough." 

And what followed was the loud and painful screams of the boy who payed for his sins with his wish to die than suffer for his actions. His excrutiating suffering heard and mixed only by the creatures of his own indignations as Dante did his work and walked away. 

Leaving behind a single mother in the house who would later believe what she claimed was going to happen behind the boy's locked door actually come to pass and it was his own fault.